It's not a bad list if you're looking for stuff that's pretty mainstream. I mean, don't get me wrong..."films" used to be pretty edgy, but the reality is that everybody's making them now and there's really hardly any difference between a film and a movie anymore. If you're looking for true pretention you need to be searching out pieces, and the ones I'm thinking about are extremely obscure.I pretty much doubt anybody here has heard of them. But yeah, for most people, this list works fine.

movies are for mouth-breathers who watch mindless action crap on their TVs

The ironic thing is that there is arguably more pretentiousness on TV right now than there is in movies.

Hell, if you want to go by the dictionary definition of the word, Lost, one of the most popular and successful shows of the last 10 years, was one of the most oppressively pretentious shows ever broadcast.

Generally what people mean when they say "pretentious" is "I don't get it." Just because you don't get it doesn't mean it was pretentious. There may be nothing to "get."

P.S. I totally agree with the author that Tree of Life was a pretentious piece of sh*t by the way.

I'm really tired of people slapping the word "pretentious" on shiat, just because.

Apparently, so is the author of TFA:But "pretentious" is a word that now appears to have expanded from its original definition to mean, among other things, "snobby and intellectual", or "black and white, with subtitles", or "I don't understand it, so it's tosh".

mekki:Just put Terrence Malick's whole filmography down on the list and be done with it.

For some reason, I was picturing Malcom McDowell (he played someone named Terrance in entourage), so I had to double check what Terrence Malick looked like. The unintentional hilarity of this picture just made my day:

I know it's cool to hate "Tree of Life," but I liked it. I liked the dreamlike sensation it created. And "Badlands" is a favorite of mine. If you can't appreciate "Badlands," I don't even want to know you.

someonelse:I know it's cool to hate "Tree of Life," but I liked it. I liked the dreamlike sensation it created. And "Badlands" is a favorite of mine. If you can't appreciate "Badlands," I don't even want to know you.

Badlands is proof positive that like a blind squirrel, Terrence Malick can find a nut every great now and then.

redmid17:mekki: Just put Terrence Malick's whole filmography down on the list and be done with it.

For some reason, I was picturing Malcom McDowell (he played someone named Terrance in entourage), so I had to double check what Terrence Malick looked like. The unintentional hilarity of this picture just made my day:

I haven't seen Tree of Life, but Days of Heaven and The New World do reward a watcher willing to meet them at the gates. I'm less enamored of Badlands, simply because I don't like valorization of serial killers, but it's stuck with me. I've struggled with The Thin Red Line.

Used to be Last Year at Marienbad was the poster for art house pretention, with L'Avventura as a lieutenant, but those aren't watched much anymore.

The article, by the way, gets into one sense of 'pretention' - long, dolorous. But someone like Wes Anderson is also highly pretentious. You may like his movies - and I like a few - but The Royal Tennenbaums and The Life Aquatic are the definition of the word.

Also, stunning that David Lynch didn't make the list. He's pretentious out the wazoo. Just insufferable. Hell, the DVD of Mullholland Drive has no chapter breaks because you're supposed to watch the whole thing, beginning to end, with no breaks. The thing would be unwatchable if not for the lesbians.

someonelse:I know it's cool to hate "Tree of Life," but I liked it. I liked the dreamlike sensation it created. And "Badlands" is a favorite of mine. If you can't appreciate "Badlands," I don't even want to know you.

This. His movies are beautiful. Ask your favorite director what they think of Terrence Malik.

I really liked Holy Motors, if nothing else just to see Denis Lavant shift from character to character. Amazing acting. And I'm still not sure if anything in the movie was "real", or if even the limo scenes were a performance.

Scorpitron is reduced to a thin red paste:Also, stunning that David Lynch didn't make the list. He's pretentious out the wazoo. Just insufferable. Hell, the DVD of Mullholland Drive has no chapter breaks because you're supposed to watch the whole thing, beginning to end, with no breaks. The thing would be unwatchable if not for the lesbians.